Page 134 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

was just sitting and watching TV. I got hungry. I went to the kitchen to get some

bread and marmalade. I slipped. I’m not sure how, or on what, but my head
caught the oven-door handle on the way down. I think I might have blacked out
for a minute or two. Sit down, Pari. You’re looming over me.”
Pari sits. “The doctor said you were drinking.”
Maman cracks one eye half open. Her frequenting of doctors is exceeded only
by her dislike of them. “That boy? He said that? Le petit salaud. What does he
know? His breath still smells of his mother’s tit.”
“You always joke. Every time I bring it up.”

“I’m tired, Pari. You can scold me another time. The whipping post isn’t
going anywhere.”
Now she does fall asleep. Snores, unattractively, as she does only after a
binge.
Pari sits on the bedside stool, waiting for Dr. Delaunay, picturing Julien at a
low-lit table, menu in hand, explaining the crisis to Christian and Aurelie over

tall goblets of Bordeaux. He offered to accompany her to the hospital, but in a
perfunctory way. It was a mere formality. Coming here would have been a bad
idea anyway. If Dr. Delaunay thought he had seen theatrical earlier … Still, even
if he couldn’t come with her, Pari wishes he hadn’t gone to dinner without her
either. She is still a little astonished that he did. He could have explained it to
Christian and Aurelie. They could have picked another night, changed the
reservations. But Julien had gone. It wasn’t merely thoughtless. No. There was
something vicious about this move, deliberate, slashing. Pari has known for
some time that he has that capacity. She has wondered of late whether he has a
taste for it as well.
It was in an emergency room not unlike this one that Maman first met Julien.
That was ten years ago, in 1963, when Pari was fourteen. He had driven a
colleague, who had a migraine. Maman had brought Pari, who was the patient

that time, having sprained her ankle badly during gymnastics in school. Pari was
lying on a gurney when Julien pushed his chair into the room and struck up a
conversation with Maman. Pari cannot remember now what was said between
them. She does remember Julien saying, “Paris—like the city?” And from
Maman the familiar reply, “No, without the s. It means ‘fairy’ in Farsi.”
They met him for dinner on a rainy night later that week at a small bistro off
Boulevard Saint-Germain. Back at the apartment, Maman had made a protracted
show of indecision over what to wear, settling in the end for a pastel blue dress
with a close-fitting waist, evening gloves, and sharp-pointed stiletto shoes. And
even then, in the elevator, she’d said to Pari, “It’s not too Jackie, is it? What do